Making the case for the right to life of every innocent, from Lake County, Illinois

Wednesday, March 2, 2016

Maryland Bill for Assisted Suicide

Mental Health Concerns Cannot Be Ignored in Assisted Suicide Debate

Editor’s note. Maryland’s HB 404 would legalize physician-assisted suicide.During
the House committee hearing on HB 404, the lead proponent of the bill
from Compassion and Choices (formerly the Hemlock Society) argued with a
straight-face that requiring a patient to receive a mental health
evaluation before they could qualify for physician assisted suicide
would “unnecessarily slowdown” a patient’s access to assisted suicide.
They cited statistics that cite a shortage of mental health
professionals in Maryland and argue that only 14% of mental health
practitioners in Maryland could see a patient within four weeks
(implying that the rest would be much longer wait times.)

Their argument may seem truly unbelievable to those watching the
physician assisted suicide debate. However, the tie between mental
health, depression, and assisted suicide is no longer a matter of
conjecture.

A recent medical study led by researchers at Harvard Medical School,
the University of Michigan and the University of the Netherlands, and
published in the Journal of the American Medical Association –
Psychiatry, was flagged recently in the New York Times, and examines
this exact issue
[www.nytimes.com/2016/02/11/health/assisted-suicide-mental-disorders.html?_r=1].
The study, quite chillingly, “raises questions about the practice
[assisted suicide], finding that in more than half of approved cases,
people declined [mental health] treatment that could have helped, and
that many cited loneliness as an important reason for wanting to die.
The study, of cases in the Netherlands, should raise concerns for other
countries debating where to draw the line when it comes to people’s
right to die, experts said.”

The report in the New York Times is well worth the read. The
findings of the study leave us more confident than ever that Maryland
risks dangerous negligence if they pass this bill and allow those with
mental health issues to access physician assisted suicide.
This legislation’s proponents are emphatic that mental health issues
will never be a factor in allowing people to utilize assisted
suicide…but we are already skeptical of the insistence that there is no
link in the physical conditions. More salient, however, is the fact that
mental health is an accepted reason for assisted suicide in other
countries.

Where does that leave us? It leaves us with the unsettling findings
of this study. Again, proponents want to sweep this under the rug.
That is quite simply unacceptable – contact your legislators today and tell them why they must oppose HB 404 and SB 418.
Editor’s note. This appeared at Maryland Stop Assisted Suicide
[http://stopassistedsuicidemd.org/mental-health-concerns-cannot-be-ignored-in-assisted-suicide-debate/]